Easter Here is Huge

Easter here is huge, but it's quite cheapened when you see everyone just taking a 4 day long vacation, and nobody really doing any Jesus things.  We saw bunches of Hindu and Muslim kids lighting fireworks though, that was celebratory.  And we got to sing that one hymn that I like, Christus is Verezen nu!

Today we ate lunch at the Salijo's again.  It was good, but I wonder if the people who live here their whole lives ever get sick of eating the same food every single day.  I think I would, luckily we make our own food too, so it's more varietiesly.  

Thanks for the ring! That was quite the experience, having 14 20-year-olds all in a room balling their heads off.  The 40 day fast was great, we all grew a little closer and had a good follow up meeting about it, everyone was enlightened I think. 

Elder Bytendorp talked to a man last week that really wanted a Book of Mormon, so we were trying to get a hold of him, and I took this picture of Elder Bytendorp.  I thought that that particular sunset was really cool.  

The guy ended up blowing us off 3 times and I don't think he'll be receiving a book.  That's super frustrating about Surinamers, they tell you a time to come over, and then aren't there.  This happens at least daily, and usually many times a day.  I guess they just aren't used to appointments.  Friday we showed up to two different people who asked us to come over at a specific time, we changed our whole schedule to do it, and then we show up and they were taking a nap.  That's one thing about Suriname too, if someone is taking a nap, it is a federal offense to wake them.  I think I'd appreciate that, but then you get through your whole life and realize all you did was sleep.  

I went on exchanges with Elder Guinn on Wednesday.  We had lots of fun, knocking doors in the richest neighborhood in Suriname, and just talking and laughing.

We taught Zr Parni about tithing.  It was a disaster.  She had no clue that tithing was a commandment.  We tried explaining it using the scriptures, but the whole situation was just spiraling out of control.  Then after  the closing prayer when both Elder Bytendorp and I assumed that she was going to never come back to church, she reviewed the law of tithing one more time, and understood most of it and accepted it.  It was an absolute miracle. 

I've still never crashed my bike as a missionary, I feel like I'm getting left out of the club or something, everyone else seems to crash.  

Love you bunches

-Elder Hulme  

I Don't Much Care for Thieves

We had a rough week, we got dropped by just about every one of our investigators. They said they don't want to get baptized and stopped all progress.  This didn't happen with Karta however, because we haven't even been able to see them since last Monday.  I had a few bike problems which were tricky to solve due to the lack of parts here in Suriname.  I couldn't get tubes for my bike, it was a joke.  Luckily it worked out in the end.  I think the worst part about the whole week was that my face broke out. I had a zit on my neck right on the collar and it hurt incredibly. 

Elder Hulme and Elder Bytendorp drinking Cocos

Timothy swinging a hak mes (chop knife) through the air to cut open a coco

This week we get to find all new families, which isn't all bad.  We can be at least assured that we aren't wasting time with people who won't progress.   I just want to be assured that my service is actually helping people, because it usually seems that the people see us as an irritant.  Hopefully that's not the case always.  The tough part is that if we were teaching pleasing doctrines, people would be all over it, but we're called to teach truth.  Once you start living according to truth it is pleasing, and brings that fruit that Lehi was so excited about. 

"Octopus flavored chips aren't as good as you'd assume"

The tulip farm is very Dutch looking.  Cool thing about tulips and the name thereof.  Tulp is the word in Dutch.  The tricky part is that in Dutch you roll the L's and the R's.  The R is similar to spanish how the r's are rolled.  The L's are stranger though.  Think of the word milk.  Dutch says it Melk, but it's pronounced more like melluck.  Tulip is similar, the Dutch word is Tulp, but pronounced Tuh-lip. 

Today, we were playing Ultimate Frisbee as a zone, and some guy raided our stuff.  Our phone got stolen.  Also Elder Lundgren's wallet and watch.  Then to top it all off, Elder Bytendorp's bag.  The bag itself has lasted through his entire mission until this morning.  In it was his Dutch triple and Bible, his glasses, camera, new pen, flip flops, all sorts of stuff.  Poor guy.  I don't much care for thieves really.  We got a new phone from the Elders in Uitkijk, since they had an extra.  Preparation day is always too short.  After email today, we're headed to the city to see if we can get Elder Bytendorp's old glasses fixed, get some pants made for me, and eat lunch with Elders Guinn and Badoni at the Pannenkoek house.  They make super fancy super Dutch pancakes (hybrid of a real pancake and a crepe) and then we were going to see if there is a tailor who will take fat ties and trim them into skinny ties.  Good luck right?

Much love, Elder Hulme

Flat Tire, Broken Camera, Ripped Pants, Bird Poop

Recent converts are great, I liked hearing about the one in Oregon. Here are the recent converts we have here in Blauwgrond (blue ground)

Kasmani 1 - 6

Zr Parni

Jacinta- won't talk to us, I haven't even been able to meet her

Ramon- coaches soccer, busy every week and hasn't been to church since I've been in Suriname.  We're super responsible for these people, but 2 of them are super impossible, which makes things super hard to stay on super top of. 

 

I've been trying to teach Zr Kasmani's other two sons, but they are slippery.  We waited for one for 20 minutes yesterday, then we had to go to another lesson, and he took off right after we left.  The other we've got an appointment with Friday.  They are 18 and 22 I think, and they get into fist fights all the time.  I think missionary service is good for young men.  They are both covered in tattoos (tattooing here begins at 14 years old it seems, so most of the tattoos you see are absolutely awful).  Luckily, Zr Kasmani is determined to get them taught, so we'll be working with her in that way. 

 

Saturday was nuts, and filled with opposition.  We had to print some stuff out, and when we came out, I had a flat tire.  So we called a taxi, got a new tube, then while I was installing the tube, I ripped my pants (2nd pair this week that got killed in the crotch).  It wasn't too big of a hole luckily - easily sewed.  Then when I was nearly done with the tube I ripped another hole in the pants! That Kleermaker makes some wussy pants.  They are only 4 months old.  Still sewable though, and has been done now.  Then our appointment wasn't there, which wasn't the worst thing because we had to head up to Clevia anyway. We went to Warung for lunch.  Food was great, I had bamie and bacabanas.  Then we came back to the bikes, and a bird took a poop in my helmet.  It was way gross, so I cleaned the helmet and we headed out to Clevia.

Clevia is North, the northernmost part of the country.  Which means the closest part to the ocean, which ocean I still have not seen.  But it also means that frequently there is a huge breeze that comes, and it was way strong Saturday.  I was dripping with sweat by the time we got to our destination.  Here you're usually wet, but not frequently super sweaty, but Saturday was way way sweaty.  Then Elder Bytendorp broked his camera (that was stolen two days later).  It was rough, but we ended up teaching a lot of people that day.  We decided now to only work with families if at all possible, we have 4 investigator families now, two are looking super super promising, and two took some steps in the wrong direction.  The coolest are the Fung-A-Wing and Karta families, the other two are Asmad and Kastani.  Elder Bytendorp learned the spelling of Fung-A-Wing from the tattoo on sister Fung-A-Wing's back, it was hilarious having him explain how to spell that name and how he knew. 

Ripsticks here are the hottest thing, everyone wants a ripstick.  Life is good here in the Caribbean

-Elder Hulme

Conference was Absolutely Enjoyable

Dogs here are mangy and nasty.

Elder Hulme and Elder Bytendorp (I think)

One of their favorite restaurants

Conference was absolutely enjoyable.  Here's the timeline.

Saturday morning.  Woke up, studied and then went out to try to talk to the people, we got slammed and nothing done, people were MAD that morning for some reason.  Then the Zone Leaders picked us up, and we went and picked all the other missionaries up together and met at the church at 1, when the first session began.  Enjoyed the first session and learned lots, then we went out and talked to the people again. These people were nicer, but all Hindu, and may or may not be valuable to continue teaching.  Went to the second session beginning at 5.  Loved it.  Then we went to McDonalds for food due to starvingness, had a good time there and talked to some of the members afterwords and sat down for Priesthood at 9.  Priesthood is #1.  Then we went to the two missionary houses in the area for sleeping.  I stayed at the Zone Leader's, listened to Elder Thompson and Norton play guitar until about midnight, and then fell asleep.  We got up and ate some french toast, then went to the church to do studies.  I studied about the priesthood like President Uchdorf asked.  I learned lots from DandC 20, it's a good one.  We then did some role playing with everyone and went out to talk to the people.  We met some nice people, some mean.  More Hindus.  Really interesting culture.  Then we watched the Sunday morning conference, which was lovely.  We had lunch at the Jansen's on Sunday.  Delicious soup, and really good sandwiches.  She had this yogurt drink that was way good when mixed with the chocolate milk, it tasted like a chocolate dipped strawberry.  Dutch people are funny, they are very very very picky with a few things:

Cream and creamy things

Bread

Cheese

Stroopwaffels

Weird kinds of salty black liquorice

Bitter foods, they love them.  Like the soup which was so herby and wondefully bitter.  I haven't enjoyed soup for years, but I think I'm ok with it again. 

Priesthood is more than a fancy word, and we need to use its power. Richard G. Scott said something way interesting about getting married young, I'd say definitely check his talk out, it was beautiful. I mostly enjoyed hearing about the priesthood, but the other stuff was good also.  When president Monson said he was going to talk about a very special temple, the only thing that came to my mind was "whoa it's time for New Jerusalem!!!!!" But that was not the case.  He was talking about the newly announced and incredibly beautiful Rome temple where the olden Apostles did their proselytizing.  It was a great relaxer, I was getting wound pretty tight. It was a great time at conference.  The two Kasmani boys decided they didn't want to come to conference at all though.  It doesn't make sense to me because there is only 2 times in a year that you get to hear talks that aren't awful.  We need to do a workshop on giving good talks at some point. 

-Elder Hulme 

I was on exchanges with Elder Thompson.  We went to an appointment with a super uninterested man, closed the lesson as soon as possible due to how uninterested he was.  Afterwords he asked if we were still looking for families.  This came from the day of initial contact where we drilled him for referrals.  He showed us the direction and gave a few instructions on where a family he knows lives.  We went looking and asked a few people.  One man was mean.  One lady was nice.  So we asked the nice lady who she knew we could try to visit.  She referred us to the same family.  So we went and finally found them.  Turns out it's a part member family, Mom and daughter are members.  Other daughter is now and investigator.  The coolest part, is that we set a goal of two reactivation's for the month of April.  Game on.  -Elder Hulme

This is a "success story."  The zone Leaders asked us to send these in every week, it's something important to President Gamiette. 

I Love you bunches.  Until next week.

March 28, 2011

Ruiz is a recent convert who is getting married in August and going to the temple in September.

Zuma and Elder Hulme

Elder Bytendorp and Elder Hulme.   This outside of the church in Tamenga, where we will watch General Conference next week.

ZR Parni's house after the massive rain on Tuesday.  The whole city was flooded.  I was in water up past the top of my chain ring.

It's cool, because missionaries have been trying to get ZR Parni to church for 6 months and she simply didn't ever come.  Now she's been 3 weeks in a row.  I think it's because she likes it when we speak Javan's with her, that's the language of the Javanese.  Akoe sunung karo kowee. That's the Dutch spelling of a Javans sentence, so it likely won't translate well.  

Everyone rides on handlebars here

Me and Seth going to an appointment.

My missionary day was great, we got our house inspected, and had an effective work day.  Made brownies.  Elder Bytendorp's birthday was nuts!  We taught so many people! And we bought Pizza Hut, which was way expensive, each slice is 10SRD.  It was delicious though, and lasted two days.  Then we had Zone Conference on Saturday morning. Apparently this daily goals thing is brilliant.  I set weekly goals, then plan out how to achieve them with daily goals, then when I achieve my daily goals, the weekly goals just fall into place.  It's a good system.  
Zone Conference we talked about activating the power of the Priesthood here in Suriname.  President Gamiette got me really inspired to do better with this last chunk of full time service.  


Elder Bytendorp has been great.  He's good about taking pictures of stuff.  Our only problem is that we are both easily distracted, so planning every night that is supposed to take 30 minutes, takes an hour and a half each day.  We're working on it though.  I've been thinking a lot about how I can become a better teacher.  This was introduced by CES to President Gamiette:  Search, Analyze and Apply questions
Search questions are things found in the text that you just read, they are used to specify what will be discussed, they are called the head knowledge.
Analyze questions are used to take the principle out of the text.  They get the person thinking, and are the heart knowledge.  
Apply questions are used to take the head and heart knowledge, and place it into the soul.  They are tough sometimes.  These are the Soul questions.

I'm still not incredible with this source of good teaching, but I'll be working on it a lot.  President Gamiette blew us away with his use of these types of questions.  It was absolutely incredible.  This is something that has always been around, but is becoming more understood now, so hopefully we will all become better teachers.  


The Jansens are having the missionaries over today at 2, so I'll be having a very delightful dutch meal later today.  
I love you all bunches.

March 14, 2011

This week was good.  I've comitted myself and Elder Freeman to work with the branch more, and we did.  The issue is that all of our other numbers dropped.  I had to use a morning doing more visa stuff - working state side has benefits.  Elder Freeman's bike is kabusted, and we spent from 11 to 4 on Friday trying to fix it, it's still broken. Numbers wise, good week.  Souls wise, I just hope we helped someone. 

We found a lady, Mevrouw Panee.  I think it's a french name that is spelled more like Panet, but I'm not positive.  She told us all these stories her great grandpa told her as a child.  They are native american.  The coolest part is that all the stories she told us, are actually in the Book of Mormon.  I think we'll be working toward helping her and her son get baptized. 

The Kasmanis haven't been to church in 3 weeks, except for Denise and Cheyanne.  I asked Sister Kasmani if she was coming, she said that they didn't have enough money to get to church, because taxi prices are going up with gasoline which is 4.75SRD per liter unleaded (yes, the gasoline is incredibly expensive).  I asked them to pray for a miracle.  I then went home and made some phone calls to try to make the miracle come about, and it did.  I want to give a little interlude on faith.  Some people seem to think that faith is just not doubting, but I'm convinced that that is only 1% of 100 of what faith is.  James 2 teaches that faith without works is dead.  Alma 32:21 teaches that we have to not see, but believe in something that is true.  So in this story, I demonstrated faith in believing that I could get them a ride, but it didn't mean anything until I did all possible to get them a ride, or rather, did something faithful.  It's all about what you do, not what you think or your attitude about things, however thoughts and attitudes affect what you do.  So if you have faith, it is measured by what you do.  Interlude concluded.  Ritchi, again the Branch Mission Leader, said he'd be glad to pick them up and take them to church.  So I called Brother Kasmani Sunday morning, he was working.  I called sister Kasmani, no answer.  I called Denise, who was sleeping, and told her that they had a ride.  She was very excited and sleepy and went to wake up everyone else.  Ritchy showed up to church and only Denise and Cheyanne had come.  For some reason, the rest stayed home, simply didn't want to come.  I'm so perplexed, because when we go there twice a week, each Monday and Thursday, they are thrilled to see us, and seem super excited, they invite their friends and everything.  There is something else there, and we have to find it.  It'll come though. 

 

Mom, you asked about the food washing.  I hope that I'm not missing something there, but I haven't washed any food since I got here, at least nothing out of the ordinary.  I've heard that Guyana is way worse and filthier, but here everything is mostly clean.  I'm still getting fat, so I don't think I've got any sicknesses or parasites.  My tan pants and a pair of my blue pants are completely too small, I can't even button them.  I think that I'm just putting on man weight, and not really getting all that fat, just thickening out of my boyish figure a bit. 

I heard about those Japanese earthquakes, Hopelijk is alles daarmee goed. 

The zone leaders have a van, and the Jansens have a truck, the rest of us are on bikes.  The people who live above us have a car, they are great neighbors, they don't play loud movies or anything, and they are neat and clean, even though the construction workers are filthy and leave the place looking like garbage outside.  He actually cleaned up a bunch of the construction stuff yesterday.

Nobody likes dogs here, they just are for protection (The dogs here aren't like American dogs at all.  They are the most foul and disgusting things imaginable, not like Decca at all.) Houses here have a gate, then the porched is barred up like a prison.  All the windows are barred up.  

We continue to buy Mrs. Olga's popsicles, even though there is a woman down the road that sells chocolate ones - I still need to investigate that.  We've taught her grandson a few times. The woman is awful and not very kind to us, but I want to buy her ijsjes some day.

We are not allowed to take naps on Sunday, however I was reading the Book of Mormon during lunch and fell asleep for 15 minutes, but  we got out of the house on time anyway.  

President Gamiette comitted us to read the who Book of Mormon in a month.  I decided to read it in Dutch, and I'm on track to finish by the end of the month.  I've been reading so so much it seems, but it's been great.  If I'm feeling down, or not very excited about the work, or tired or anything I'll just start reading, and it boosts me enough to keep going strong.  I'm also putting the story together better, Mormon was brilliant.  He was able to put 2 or 3 stories, simultaneously happening, together and do so in a way that is understandable.  Also he recorded the history of an entire civilization and put in tons of doctrine. I hope to meet that guy some day. 

Transfer calls are this Thursday, we'll see what I'll be doing for the next 6 weeks.  This transfer has gone by so fast for me.

Love you all.

-Elder Hulme

March 21, 2011

No new photos, so this is an old one - Elder Hulme, President Holzapfel, Elder Guinn

I got a new companion.  Elder Bytendorp, from Sandy.  He's got less than 6 months in his mission, so he's the most experienced companion I've ever had.  I think that this is going to be a fantastic couple of weeks.  I was shocked however, that I stayed with Elder Freeman only for 6 weeks.  He got transferred to the south, Koewarisan.  He was really sad I think, and the Kasmani's said that they don't like it when the missionaries leave, and that we're no longer allowed to go over to their house.  I hope they don't mean it, but they were really sad.  I'll send more info on Elder Bytendorp when I know him better, he does snowboard though, so that's good. 

 

Thursday is 1 year for me.  Also the day before Elder Bytendorp's birthday.  As for the halfway mark, things have started to begin clicking in my mind the last few days.  It's like there was fog there, and it's not there anymore.  I'm not sure what it is that's changing, but something is.  I like being in charge of the area, even though I'm Jr companion now,  I'll be planning everything because he's never worked here.  I was receiving all kinds of inspiration in church on Sunday, even though the talks and stuff were the same as all the other weeks.  Numbers this week were about the same, but we taught lots of lessons.  

I spent all morning cleaning someone else's apartment today.  The health lady from the mission is coming on Wednesday, and this apartment needed help, so they sent me there with Elder Baker and we cleaned for a few hours and then went to Roopram for some roti.  It's absolutely incredible how filthy missionaries are.  I think due to how easy it is to say things like "well I only lived there 3 weeks."  Phrases like that are a recently found enemy of mine.  Again, I threw away years and years worth of collected garbage, cleaned things that had never been cleaned before, and used another big chunk of another p-day.  After roti, we moved Elder Bytendorp in (Elder Freeman moved out last night) and now I'm here emailing. The real bummer is that I needed to purchase a new wheel today, but we still haven't done laundry or shopping and the wheel place is simply too far for how short my time is.  Also I have two letters, one for Hoven and one for Jayson that I needed to send, but not enough time. 

 

I love you all.  The work here is going forward, I'm happy and loving the land and the people. 

-Elder Hulme